Wednesday, July 28, 2004

Are We Back On That Again?

My dad was born in the early '40s. He's stuck with the Red Sox through the heartbreaking years of '46, '48, '49, '67, '72, '75, '78, '86, '99, '03, plus the last-place years and yankee championships along the way. Needless to say, he's a "real" Red Sox fan. However, bostondirtdogs.com just informed me that my dad is actually NOT a real Sox fan. I'll explain. My dad has taught me in the ways of yankee-hating my whole life. I hope to one day pass this tradition on to future generations of my family. When my dad heard about the "yankee Hater" hats, he said to me, "I gotta get me one of those." Today, speaking of those hats, dirtdogs said,

"For the last time, real Sox fans don’t wear that crap."

And he used Curt Schilling's quotes to kind of back him up. (Schilling said that there's "ZERO" hatred between the two teams, just respect.)

Okay, players have to say that stuff. At different points throughout my life I've seen Red Sox players talking and laughing with yankee players. You make friends around the league, that's gonna happen in games between any two teams. But that has nothing to do with one fan's hatred of the rival team. Curt Schilling is an athlete. Don't you think growing up he hated (all right, he says he doesn't hate anyone or anything--also the "right thing" for a public figure to say--so I'll say "strongly disliked") the rival teams of whatever teams he rooted for? Or in college, surely he had a rival. Why is it suddenly bad to be a sports fan who hates their rival? Especially when it's the yankees. I don't see how you couldn't hate that team! Take my friend who I'll call James (who happens to be a yankee fan.) He went to Ohio State. Ask him if he hates Michigan. If he did stop laughing, he'd give you a resounding yes, and wouldn't be ashamed. Why should he? What kind of weak fan would have sympathy for the enemy? And let's remember that Schilling put on that hat in the first place. I don't care what he's saying now, he took a hat that says "yankee hater" on it, and wore it in public.

I feel bad for dirtdog if he was sitting there watching the Sox-yanks fight, and not getting excited about it, just sitting at home, yelling at the screen, "Break it up, guys!" And then thinking that Varitek's sitting in the clubhouse saying, "God, I respect A-Rod so much!"

Gimme a break.

And then Ed of Bambino's Curse just said in an interview how there are the "yankees Suck" Red Sox fans, and then there are the "literary" Sox fans.

Actually, I think I've got it all figured out. These two guys, the two who run the two most popular Red Sox sites, never seem to take my letters too seriously. In fact, Ed has never written me back. I guess they see my "illiterate" view on the world (being a yankee hater) and decide I'm not worth their time. But what is worth their time is saying the exact right thing, to the point where they each were picked up by major media sources. I say F the yanks, F the Media, F the people who'll say whatever it takes to get a paycheck.

That's right Boston Globe, don't sign me, I'm a Red Sox fan who hates the yankees. Good God! Not in our paper, you don't! This guy might come in to our office with his ratty trench coat and bag of cans, dragging his dirty knuckles across our good carpeting!

My point, which I've made before, is that I understand that the commerce side of "yankees suck" can be disturbing, when you realize that the people making the hats could be Brewers fans for all we know. Hell, I've been calling myself a yankee hater my whole life and I kinda wish I'd known that all I had to do was put a YH on a hat and sell 'em around Boston. Then I'd be the rich one, but at least I'd have been selling something I made and fully support.

Some people may be doing it for the wrong reasons, every team has their fans who are morons But personally, I've just got a natural, honest hatred of the New York yankees. Tonight I watched them lose on a homer in the tenth, and a feeling of pure joy came over me. I didn't have to hear from someone else that I'm supposed to be happy that they lost. It's just the way I was raised. And I feel good hearing the Fenway crowd booing the crap out of the yanks all game long. That's 35,000 people every night who buy a ticket, and go out and show their perfectly natural hatred of the yankees.

My request of dirtdog would be to please stop telling me and my family that we're not real Red Sox fans. In fact, if you want to sit around respecting the yankees all day and saying how great they all are, just go ahead and be a yankee fan.

And my request to Ed would be to not divide Red Sox fans into two categories, and put anyone who hates the yankees into the "dumb guy" category. After all, we can't all be quoting Voltaire or whoever every time we speak. In fact, that's ironic, because I believe it was he who said, "Opinion has caused more trouble on this earth than all the plagues and earthquakes."

While I agree that some people can get on their high horse at times, I definately think the Yankees Suck thing has gone over the top annoying. It's great to have passionate Sox fans, but the Yankee Hating makes Sox Fans come across as annoying as Raider fans.

I don't mean to say this to say that your point of view is wrong, but I stand a little more in the middle of the road on this one.